The
Topic

This
workshop aimed to
promote inquiry into social phenomena that involve value-exchange, and
in
particular on systems for credit and value transfer that do not rely on
contract or centralised record keeping. Examples include: local
baby-sitting
circles, informal lending of books among friends, generalised exchange
and the
Hawala/Hundi systems of money transfer.

Informal value transfer and credit networks involve people or
institutions
providing credit or value transfer services based on social trust
rather than
laws and contracts. Such networks constitute a complex system that have
been
relatively unmodelled yet have a significant impact on people's lives
(antrhropologists have studied them for a long time). ICT advances –
for
example the reduction of social distance and the advent of
economically-feasible micro transactions – allow for significant
improvements
in reach and quality of these networks and might allow the release of
presently
untapped social resources.

We aim to contribute to understanding and to change in networks for
credit and
value transfer by individual based simulation. Many aspects of
human
cooperation involve some exchange of value and are the traditional
subject
matter of the field of economics. However this exchange often
involves
many social processes and mechanisms other than those usually
considered by
economists, including: social norms, altruism, reputation, trust, group
membership, friendship, kinship, identity, status etc. These can only
be
understood by modelling them at the individual level (with possible
analytic
models later), using techniques such as agent-based simulation to take
into
account their social complexity.

The above artefacts are going to play an ever more important role
thanks to the
removal of barriers and to individual empowerment allowed by the growth
of
communication networks. As a consequence, the conversion of the above
processes
and mechanisms to their monetary value could grow more and more
difficult, and
the financial institutions that move and manage money could get
reshaped. Two
contrasting forces are at work here. On one hand, the ease with which
value and
credit can be transferred worldwide favours large, powerful
organizations,
whose aims grow less and less related to the territory. On the other
hand,
individuals can exert a stronger control on their own (small-scale)
resources,
creating a potential for peer finance, where mental constructs can play
a very
important role. We already see the effects of this second force in the
rise of
micro business and micro finance.

This workshop invites contributions of individual-based models of these
aspects
of society that involve value exchange or coordination. The
economic
processes of price, supply/demand and varieties of economic rationality
(e.g.
bounded rationality, optimisation etc.) are relatively well studied –
this
workshop aims to concentrate on the other social aspects involved.

Publication

Future
plans, including publication of new/revised papers will be discussed at
the end
of the workshop. We have an "in principle" agreement from the
editor of Real-World Economics
Review
to publish a selection of revised papers resulting from workshop in a
special
section there (depending on their quality and appropriateness), so that
is a
real possibility.

Organisers

Bruce
Edmonds (UK),
is a Senior Research Fellow at the Manchester Metropolitan University
Business School and Director of the Centre for Policy Modelling.
He was the scientific chair of the 2009 ESSA conference, and is on the
council of the CSS. He is currently editing a “Handbook on
Simulating Social Complexity” for Springer. He has been on the PC
and organising committees of far too many workshops and conferences to
list. His publications are at http://bruce.edmonds.name/pubs.html

David
Hales
(Netherlands) is a researcher at the Technical University of Delft. He
has been involved in the organisation of a number of workshops and
conferences centred around complexity / agent-based modelling including
MABS 2003, M2M 2003, CSS-TW1 (2006) and SASO 2007. He has been involved
with previous ECCS conferences in various capacities and is currently a
member of the Complex Systems Society and the European Social
Simulation Association. His publications can be found at: http://davidhales.com

Mario
Paolucci
(Italy) is a researcher at the Laboratory of Agent Based Social
Simulation, ISTC-CNR. He has coordinated the eRep "Social Knowledge for
e-Governance" project under EU FP6. He is a member of several program
committees, including AAMAS 2009 (Senior PC member), The 3rd
International Conference on Complex Distributed Systems (CODS 2009),
and ACM SAC session on trust/reputation. He has chaired the RASTA '02
and RASTA '03 workshops, the RAS '04 workshop, and the MABS 2007
workshop. His page is at: http://www.istc.cnr.it/createhtml.php?nbr=2

Juliette
Rouchier
(France) is a researcher at GREQAM (Groupement de Recherche en Economie
Aix-Marseille). She was organiser of the First World Conference for
Social Simulation and of two Model to Model workshops (relating
Agent-based modelling to other types of models) and is PC member of
many workshops and conference. She has worked on trust formation in
groups for the last 10 years. Her publications can be found at: http://www.vcharite.univ-mrs.fr/PP/rouchier/publications.html